Foris Labs

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Nigeria

An offline platform that simulates a science lab for high school students, in which they can perform individual or group experiments.

Q&A with Judges

The judges and finalists will be engaging in Q&A here until April 10. Follow along on each finalist page, and register to find out which team will win the 2021 Longevity Design Challenge on April 13!

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jnakagawa
jnakagawa
April 8, 2021 5:39 pm

Who creates and validates the curriculum? How often will content be refreshed?

Does the team consider lab collaboration (student to student; student to instructor) important? If so, how will collaboration be achieved if the lab is offline?

forislabs
forislabs
April 9, 2021 8:56 am
Reply to  jnakagawa

Thank you Ms Nagakawa for that question. 1. Who creates and validates the curriculum? We use the curriculum prepared and validated by the Ministry of Education to create our contents. As stated in our feasibility slide, we have successfully recruited and trained 15 science professionals (each of them have not less than 25yrs experience teaching science courses either at the high school or tertiary education level) as volunteer content advisories to the team. This way, we are sure that all our experiments rhyme with the students’ curriculum hence easing learning. We also received an endorsement from the Science Teachers Association… Read more »

Last edited 2 years ago by forislabs
agoldstein
agoldstein
April 9, 2021 3:20 am

Love this approach. Question is what is required from a bandwidth to get this program to run seamlessly.

forislabs
forislabs
April 9, 2021 8:54 am
Reply to  agoldstein

Thank you Dr Goldstein for that question. We are also happy that you love our approach. 96 percent of the program is accessible offline once the application has been downloaded/installed into the mobile phone or PC as the case may be. Internet connection is only needed during the first sign-up process, authentication and collaborative activities when the team members are not in the same locality . These activities require a download speed as low as 2mbps and upload speed of 0.5mbps. This means that with even 3G networks ( which is readily available in even the most rural areas here), one… Read more »

agoldstein
agoldstein
April 9, 2021 3:21 am

Is there new content being developed? What grade/age is this targeted.

forislabs
forislabs
April 9, 2021 9:01 am
Reply to  agoldstein

Thanks for your question. 1. Is there new content being developed?  Yes, there are new contents being developed currently. 2. What grade/age is this targeted? Inasmuch as our lab is for people of all ages, right now, we are more focused on creating contents for high school students between ages (9 to 18) according to their curriculum. We saw an opportunity in the fact that younger people love games hence we are providing gamified contents to make learning fun and easier for them. In the nearest future, we plan on incorporating contents for continued education for older learners but for… Read more »

Last edited 2 years ago by forislabs
forislabs
forislabs
April 9, 2021 8:51 am

.

Last edited 2 years ago by forislabs
ksieffert
ksieffert
April 9, 2021 1:50 pm

Great concept here. Do the majority of students in the target group have their own desktop or mobile device to be able to use this? What % do NOT have access to the needed device?

forislabs
forislabs
April 9, 2021 11:53 pm
Reply to  ksieffert

Thanks so much for your question, Ms Sieffert, Accessibility was one of the core factors we considered during our design iterations and studied during our customer research.  Nigeria is one of the African countries in which the internet and digital media penetration has been increasing in leaps. The country accounts for close to 30% of internet penetration in Africa. According to a global digital report, there were 85 million internet users in Nigeria as at January 2020. Although an estimated 60% of the population is made up of young people, there is little known about how they use digital technology… Read more »

Last edited 2 years ago by forislabs